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Rohit Saxena used to spend weekends huddled in a makeshift tent on the side of a dusty road in one of New Delhi’s fastest growing suburbs, darting into the baking sun to hand passing cars brochures for residential developments.

The heat and jostling with rival brokers in the software hub of Noida, east of New Delhi, was worth the reward, said Saxena, who closed 10 deals per weekend and in his best month earned 29 times India’s per-capita annual national income. The tents are now abandoned after courts ruled in favor of farmers protesting the acquisition of their land for development, scaring away buyers already saddled with higher borrowing costs.

The biggest building boom in India is mired in legal uncertainty as to who owns the land around new up-market apartments overlooking Greg Norman-designed golf courses and in townships near the nation’s first Formula One racing track. Across India, land acquisitions have been marred by protests, stalling about $80 billion of steel projects and a highway from New Delhi to the city of Agra, home to the Taj Mahal.

“Land is becoming a sticky issue,” said Dharmakirti Joshi, a Mumbai-based economist at Crisil Ltd., the local unit of Standard & Poor’s. “The issue is a critical component of the overall investment climate. I believe it will get sorted out, but if it doesn’t it will have repercussions.”

The area around New Delhi, the nation’s capital, is the country’s largest market in terms of development volume for new homes, according to Jones Lang LaSalle India. The projected delivery of apartments over the next three years in the suburbs of Gurgaon, Noida and Greater Noida stands at 439 million square feet (40.8 million square meters), 60 percent higher than in Mumbai, according to P.E. Analytics Pvt., a real estate research firm. That’s enough to house 340,000 families.

Affordability Lost

The suburbs are products of India’s seven years of surging economic growth, with gated communities for the burgeoning middle class swallowing up farmland that had been there for hundreds of years. The National Capital Region -- as New Delhi and its satellite towns are known -- is home to companies including Google Inc. (GOOG) and Accenture Plc.

A four-story height restriction in most parts of New Delhi has made land for new projects expensive and hard to find, driving people to more affordable areas to the south and east of the capital. Average prices in New Delhi’s environs have gained 12 percent since mid-2009, compared with as much as 40 percent across Indian cities, according to Jones Lang.

Stalled Projects

“If the original land owners are paid compensation as per market rates, developers’ costs will rise, which will impact buyers,” said Santhosh Kumar, chief executive officer of operations at Jones Lang. “Affordability will be lost.”

Homes in that belt range from about $20,000 to $4 million, said Jones Lang’s Kumar. In contrast, colonial-style bungalows along central Delhi’s tree-lined avenues, home to politicians and billionaires including ArcelorMittal Chief Executive Officer Lakshmi Mittal and K.P. Singh, owner of India’s largest property developer, can cost as much as $76 million.

In May, police clashed with villagers demanding greater compensation for land on which a new highway from New Delhi to Agra is being built. The government is scheduled to introduce a new law that pays farmers more for land.

Proposed mills by Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steel producer, and Posco, South Korea’s biggest steelmaker, have been delayed by six years because of failure to secure land and mining rights.

Farmers Shortchanged

The spat over land on the outskirts of New Delhi deepened when India’s highest court quashed the acquisition of some farm land in a village after farmers claimed they were shortchanged in forced sales to the government, which had promised to use some of the land for industrial purposes and pledged jobs to the former residents. Instead, the government sold the land to developers.

The court in July directed the return of land to the villagers and farmers, who lived in basic houses with naked brick walls, growing wheat, mustard and lentils.

Builders say their contracts with the government are valid and it’s a problem for authorities to fix. The government is now in talks with the farmer groups to increase compensation.

Broker Saxena, who is marketing builder Supertech Group Ltd.’s Cape Town project in one of the disputed areas, said prices have stagnated at about 3,196 rupees per square foot because of the dispute. He had expected prices to climb 8 percent.

‘Standstill’

Saxena said his best month was in March 2010 when he earned 1.05 million rupees ($22,932), about half the per-capita income of the U.S. last year and 29 times the 35,917 rupee average per- capita income in India. With commissions now stalling, Saxena is having to make do with his fixed salary of 30,000 rupees a month.

“People are very wary now, so no new sales are happening,” said Samir Jasuja, chief executive officer of P.E. Analytics in Gurgaon. “Sales have come to a standstill because the customer doesn’t know what he is buying, whether the land belongs to the developer or not. There is confusion in almost all the growth areas of Noida.”

About half of the 124 million square feet of homes expected to be delivered by 2013 in Greater Noida will be affected by these land problems, he estimates.

“Sales in the disputed areas have completely stopped so that’s going to push the demand back to more established areas,” said Gurgaon-based Anshul Jain, chief executive officer at DTZ International Property Advisers Pvt.

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Last edited by DaiTengu; October 7th, 2011 at 07:21 PM.
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New Delhi, Oct 13 : Delhi is set to have three new hospitals with the state government Thursday announcing it would initiate their construction.

Heath Minister A.K. Walia said: "The government will initiate the construction of 200 bedded hospitals at Ambedkar Nagar and Chattarpur and a 100 bedded hospital at Sarita Vihar as almost all formalities have been completed."

Walia was speaking at the inauguration of newly-constructed dispensary in south Delhi's Saket area.

--IANS

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63 NCR home projects running late by 4 years
Feb 16, 2012, 02.39PM IST
The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Most homebuyers would not mind a housing project being delayed by a few months. What is worrying though is that a large number of residential projects in the national capital region, launched in 2005-06, and to be handed over to buyers latest in 2008-09, are still under construction.

A research done by property consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle shows that as many as 63 large residential projects in the NCR, with over 40,000 apartments, are delayed, many by over four years.

Of these, nine large projects with a total of 9,000 apartments have been delayed by over six years. These include four projects of Parsvnath Developers, with 2,600 apartments, and one each of DLF (Belaire), Jaypee Group (Jaypee Greens), Ambience Group, BPTP and AEZ.

"A number of these delays have been due to a lack of initial capital with the developer at the start of the project, hasty and unplanned launches, inefficient project management and issues of land acquisition," says Santhosh Kumar, chief executive officer, operations at Jones Lang LaSalle India. A number of developers have suffered also because they faced cash-flow problems while they were in the middle of a project, delays in procurement of materials.

In the last few years, real estate developers have suffered because of high cost of debt that has increased they interest payout, banks reducing their exposure to the sector and rising cost of construction. The average cost of debt for the sector has gone up from around 12% to 15-16% today. In the last one year, labour cost has jumped 40-60%, while steel and cement cost has gone up by about 30-40%.

Developers say funds are hard to come by, costs have gone up and mobilising labour is getting difficult because of the success of the government's rural employment guarantee scheme, MNREGA, which is delaying construction.

A large number of projects that are delayed are in Gurgaon and Faridabad, while Noida and Ghaziabad present a better picture, says JLL.

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Delhi Metro MD Mangu Singh inspecting the work in progress on the Central Secretariat-Mandi House stretch on Friday.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Managing Director Mangu Singh on Friday inspected ongoing work on the Central Secretariat-Mandi House stretch which will be an extension of the present Line 6 (Central Secretariat-Kashmere Gate corridor). Work is also likely to pick up with the DMRC awarding more civil works contracts for sections in Phase III.

“Mr. Singh inspected the construction site at Chelmsford Club where the first tunnel boring machine (TBM) for Phase III was lowered on January 31. He then checked the under-construction Janpath and Mandi House metro stations,” said a DMRC spokesperson.

The 3.2-km underground stretch from Central Secretariat to Mandi House was the first in Phase III for which the construction contract was awarded in June last year. Two more civil contracts have been awarded in January for Phase III – one for the construction of stations and tunnels between Mandi House and Jama Masjid, the other for the construction of a viaduct of the Faridabad corridor.

This 3.3-km section between Mandi House and Jama Masjid will be completely underground and cover three stations at ITO, Delhi Gate and Jama Masjid. “The stations will be constructed using cut-and-cover technology. The tunnelling distance for the section is around 2.5 km and will be constructed using a TBM. The contractors have been asked to complete this work in 42 months,” said the spokesperson.

The completely underground corridor will be further extended up to Kashmere Gate.

The 14-km Faridabad corridor will be completely elevated and is also an extension of Line 6 from Badarpur to Faridabad. This section (Badarpur-Faridabad) will have nine stations at Sarai, NHPC Chowk, Mewala Maharajpur, Sector 27 A, Badkal More, Faridabad Old, Ajronda, Faridabad New Town and YMCA Chowk. The section is extremely important because around 180,000 people from neighbouring Faridabad are expected to benefit from it. “The contractor will have to complete this project in 20 months,” said the spokesperson about the contract for viaduct construction.

Contracts awarded for Phase III

So far, the DMRC has awarded seven civil tenders for Phase III. These include the tender for construction of tunnels and stations for the Central Secretariat-Mandi House stretch; civil engineering work contract for design and construction of a bridge across the Yamuna at Kalindi Kunj (Okhla Barrage) on Line 8 (Janakpuri West-Kalindi Kunj); design and construction of viaduct and two elevated stations at Rohini Sector 18 and Badli on the Jahangirpuri-Badli corridor (Extension of Line 2); civil engineering works including design and construction of a bridge across the Yamuna on the Mukandpur-Yamuna Vihar corridor (Line 7); design and construction of tunnel by shield TBM, tunnel by cut-and-cover technology, construction of underground station at Azadpur by cut-and-cover method and ramps at Mukundpur and Shalimar Bagh for underground works on the Mukundpur-Yamuna Vihar corridor (Line 7). Contracts have been awarded to a mix of Indian and foreign companies.

The first section of Phase III, Central Secretariat to Mandi House, is expected to be open for the public by December 2014. “The other section corridors of Phase III will be opened subsequently to meet the Phase III completion target of March 2016,” said the spokesperson.

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The Delhi Government is drawing up plans to expand the mono rail service to many more parts of the trans-Yamuna area where extension of the Delhi Metro rail services and even plying of low-floor buses may not be feasible, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said on Friday.

The Chief Minister said in-principle approval has already been given for commissioning of a mono rail route connecting Shastri Park to Trilokpuri in East Delhi and plans to widen the network are also in the works.

Speaking at the opening of a community centre in Ghonda, she said new small taxis being developed by certain manufacturers will be first introduced in the trans-Yamuna area to facilitate availability of public transport in localities situated around narrow lanes and bazaars as it is not possible and even feasible to extend other public transport services there.

As for the Delhi Transport Corporation bus service, she said while it is plying the maximum number of buses to connect the trans-Yamuna area with other parts of the Capital, a Yamuna Mudrika Service has also been launched to provide connectivity among the colonies in this part of the city.
More planned

Even in the case of Delhi Metro, she said, while the first service had connected Shahdara to Tis Hazari, now three lines cater to the trans-Yamuna area and more stations and routes are planned in the third phase.

The Chief Minister also spoke about other development works in the area. She said the community centre in Ghonda has been constructed by the MCD with the help of funds released by the Trans-Yamuna Area Development Board and this was the 50th community centre to be financed by the Board.

The community centre has been constructed over an area of 1,750 sq.m. at a cost of Rs.3.63 crore. The two-storey building is quake-resistant, has an underground reservoir for fire-fighting, a hall, two rooms and parking for 60 cars in a semi-underground portion.

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Faculty of Education, which also follows no particular style, at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. Photo: S_Subramanium

1935 -- an age of revolutionary ideas, when the aegis of colonial imperialism was being questioned and the national movement was getting stronger by the day. It was also around this time, that many Indian educational institutes were established after heeding Mahatma Gandhi's call to boycott all British institutions.

1935 was also the year in which Jamia Millia Islamia, until then functioning out of temporary quarters in Karol Bagh, managed to cough up funds for a school building at its current Jamia Nagar location.

“German architect Karl Heinz was commissioned for this project with clear-cut instructions that he could not in any manner imbibe any elements of British or Mughal architecture, in keeping with the anti-imperialistic stand that the founders of Jamia stood for,” says Jamia Millia's Dean of Architecture Prof. S. M. Akhtar. “Also, the Jamia founders wanted to clearly break away from the prototype image of Muslims architecture, in keeping with their liberal and revolutionary ideas.”

The result: “A building that cannot be categorised into any particular school of architecture, it can be called ‘modern style of architecture' as it resembles today's buildings that is usually something that stems from the architect's imagination, like a gate I designed for the Faculty of Education which is in the form of a pen and writing pad.”

The red sandstone buildings, with white domes that have no particular pattern and big courtyards and windows that serve no particular purpose than to look pretty, came close to being completely destroyed as the high cost of conservation turned out to present a higher budget than that of a new building.

An entire dome had fallen off completely; the tiles on the floor were broken and the walls were chipped. “I convinced the university authorities to give me a chance at conservation. You see, severe seepage because of restrooms located in the building was the main culprit and once this was removed, the rest of the work became easier.”

Heinz had used local materials like red sandstone and lime which were easy to source but the floor-work was shoddy and had to be replaced with new sets of Kota sandstones.

“The dome was easier to restore, hollow and made up of lime and water. The casing made up of wood or metal grills that hold it together was also easily restorable.”

The Jamia Millia Islamia school now houses children from nursery up to Class XII, with one building still under the process of renovation.

Sadly, a few blocks away stands another building built in the 1940s, the Faculty of Education, which also follows no particular style. The several narrow entrance-ways with zigzag designs are the only eye-catching features of the off-white building.

Prof. Akhtar says the building will probably be bulldozed as he is finding it difficult to restore it. “While the school buildings were revolutionary in design, the materials used were simple and sustainable. However, even though the Faculty of Education building was constructed around ten years later, the same architect used materials which were fashionable at that time.”

Pre-cast concrete was used instead of the traditional lime and water, which is more fragile and difficult to restore, the costs are also exceptionally high. “Cement is a relatively new invention and does not match the solid stones of the past. That is why buildings in the past 100 years crumble more easily than 600-year-old buildings that have stood the test of time,” he says.

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India Gate complex to house National War Memorial
Times of India
Aug 22, 2012, 06.43AM IST

NEW DELHI: India's national war memorial (NWM), which was first mooted in the 1960s but is yet to become a reality despite a long-pending demand by the armed forces, should come up in the India Gate complex on the Central Vista in the national Capital.

Making this recommendation on Tuesday, the group of ministers (GoM) headed by defence minister A K Antony also suggested that a national war museum can concurrently come up at the Princess Park complex near India Gate. ``The recommendations are now being send to the Union Cabinet for the final approval,'' said an official.

As reported by TOI earlier, while the majestic India Gate was built by the British to honour the 84,000 Indian soldiers killed fighting for the British Empire in World War-I and the Afghan campaign, there is no NWM to remember the soldiers who laid down their lives to guard an Independent India during the 1947-48 J&K operations, the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars and the 1999 Kargil conflict.

The bone of contention for long was that while the armed forces wanted the NWM to come up near India Gate, the Union urban development ministry and the Delhi Urban Art Commission held it would disrupt the layout and spoil the aesthetics of the area.

But now, with the urban development ministry also ``on board'', the three Services will now prepare an integrated master plan for the construction of the memorial and museum. The earlier ``conceptual design'' for the NWM prepared by Army basically revolves around a landscape-type memorial around the `chhatri' (canopy) near India Gate on the Central Vista, with ``retaining walls'' for inscribing the names of the martyrs.

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NEW DELHI: There is no sign of the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) project around Delhi becoming a reality by even 2015 with the tender for its construction not finding any takers. The NHAI is now planning to extend the bid last date.

NHAI sources said though more than a dozen firms had pre-qualified for the project, none of them submitted financial bids. When this was brought to the notice of highways minister C P Joshi on Friday, he asked the highway authority to hold talks with the contractors to find out what was stopping them from submitting financial bids after pre-qualifying.

Though prevailing market conditions and low interest of contractors are cited as the main reasons for no private player bidding for NH projects, questions are being asked whether the highways ministry lost a golden opportunity last year to bid out the project.

"We could have got premium (upfront annual revenue) if the project was awarded last year when there was huge interest among bidders. But the indecision over toll rate delayed awarding of the project," an NHAI official said.

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